^The APQC Blog

Some folks just have a knack for knowledge management. They see the inherent value of sharing and reusing knowledge, they love learning about new KM tools and approaches, and they welcome opportunities to collaborate. Fortunately, almost every organization has at least a few of these KM “super-users.” But can organizations do more to capitalize on them? To find out, we turned to a panel of KM experts. These KM experts will be speaking at APQC’s Knowledge Management Conference, April 29 – May 3, 2019.

Our smartphones are constantly buzzing, alerting us about everything from political blockbusters and celebrity scandals to Twitter mentions and Instagram tags. Certainly, this can create distraction at work. But the bigger story is that smartphones and social media have fundamentally changed the ways we create, share, receive, and use information. APQC asked a roundtable of KM experts about the impact of these consumer trends on enterprise collaboration.

Communities of practice are the heart and soul of knowledge management. Not only are they one of the discipline’s most time-tested and popular approaches, they also encapsulate almost everything KM is designed to do. Communities connect people to knowledge and to each other, enable collaboration, and promote group problem solving and knowledge reuse.

There is an influx of technologies to help us improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our processes. However, whether we are working on automating process or improving the effectiveness of a manual process the end-results all have one thing in common—improving the lives of the people involved. Both the process worker and ultimate end-user of the process.

In December of 2018, APQC conducted its annual survey to understand the common challenges and priorities of financial practitioners’ agendas for the year to come.

I recently had the opportunity to talk with Pontus Westerberg, program officer at UN-Habitat, about the non-profit Block by Block program that leverages the best-selling video game Minecraft for public space planning by engaging local community members. The global accomplishments of Block by Block are impressive by the numbers:

Knowledge silos and knowledge hoarders are two of the biggest roadblocks that prevent employees from engaging in KM. Silos emerge when one part of the business—such as a team or business unit—doesn’t share knowledge with others. Knowledge hoarding is when an individual employee doesn’t share knowledge. There’s a myriad of reasons that these behaviors emerge, but they always create problems. So, APQC asked a roundtable of KM experts about the best ways to combat knowledge silos and knowledge hoarding.

Motivating employees to share and reuse knowledge is the holy grail of knowledge management. And while there are a few “natural born KMers” who actively seek out opportunities to share knowledge, most employees need KM to be easy and not feel like an added burden. So, APQC asked a roundtable of KM experts to share their ideas about putting KM in the flow of work.

Putting communities and collaboration tools in place is one thing; getting people to actually use them is another. A lot of knowledge management efforts fizzle out because they fail to catch fire with employees. And given how many organizations are currently going through digital transformations (66%) and moving collaboration to the cloud (49%), the problem of engaging users in the midst of rapid technological change feels more common—and daunting—than ever.

Process Owners absolutely LOVE APQC’s Process Classification Framework (PCF)®. Here are three key reasons why they love it so much – but first – who is a process owner? Process owners are like chief operating officers for tiny slices of an enterprise. Process owner responsibilities vary from organization to organization, but typically include: process definition, system implementation and suitability, tools to bridge gaps, people to execute processes, specific outcomes, and more.